Friendship in Mid Life: Crisis and Beyond

When I started to write about this particular topic, I quickly found myself stuck, rethinking and rewriting a lot. It can only mean that it's a diffiuclt subject for myself, but I will still try and sort out some main concerns.

In the past, I have talked quite a lot about the interaction between people on internet forums. In general, my experiences have showed me that people easily forget all about good manners when they don't have to deal with you in real life. I too, have made mistakes; I easily open up and pour out all about my inner life and personal challenges, and of course it's going to irritate people or give them an incentive to be helpful in the wrong way. Many people, especially ones who work as healthcare professionals or have recently awoken to the new age spirituality, can be a bit over-eager to help someone they perceive of as needy. Oh how embarrasingly easy to slip into the victim mode even just a tiny little bit! We all do it - well most of us anyway - yet it's one of the hardest things to admit. And people can be very cruel in their dogmatic rigidity.

My inner alarm goes off when I get a sneaking suspicion that they are not particularly in tune with who I am and what I do but more interested in my 'issues'. I have learned valuable lessons in mirroring my own issues and the frustrations I have felt because of the responses from other people, but also about not continuing to project my need to talk to other people about the more personal challenges onto people I have never even met in real life. I have to have a very good feeling in order to go onto that level with anyone online. It's all about gut feeling or intuition - staying mindful is the key. The discernment I learned to exercise was nonetheless conditioning me to a kind of paranoia that carried over to real life - this was an over alertness that needed to calm down.

For a number of years the internet was an important outlet for my social needs, but eventually my real-life situation changed and I was very relieved to leave that stage behind. Blessed were real life people - I no longer took them for granted! I had seen a lot of depressing things, and preferred to continue leading my life knowing much less about other people's shadow sides. I rather turn a blind eye to a lot of it, something which strangely seems easier to do out in the real world as opposed to the confines of the internet. I don't need to deal with other people's neuroses. This is not to say that in a way, other people's neuroses aren't part of you, because in life you see what you need to see in order to learn your lessons of life.

The importance of saying no to all that cannot be over estimated, however. Perhaps it's a sign of maturity, a way of finally establishing healthy boundaries and recognizing you don't need all this mirroring and extreme emotion. Maybe you're just growing old, or even becoming more self-centred and conceited, having decided that people aren't worth your time. Whatever the reason, you do need to learn to filter your experiences in order to be less scattered, overwhelmed, confused and lacking in groundedness. You no longer have quite the strength and stamina to tackle the misery that abounds, whether it be conscious and ostentatiously out there, or subconscious and hidden from direct view. The idealism of youth is dissipating, changing into a more level-headed attitude to life. I never thought of myself as idealistic, but I can now see that I have been that way a bit in the past. The passion and ardour with which I pursued my 'mission' is no longer obvious, and I am yet to find what exactly will replace it. I believe that opening up to an equanimity that will help deal with this in a less pessimistic manner is vital, but I also think that you cannot know to look for this unless you have already experiences what is normally part of becoming middle-aged. It's easy to make excuses and give up in the name of old age; this is not what maturity should really be about.

The scary thing about the fatigue of mid life is that many people probably feel the same. While it was cool to get to know other people when you were young, and chatting was often deeply inspired and intense, it almost grinds to a halt when you reach middle age. It's rare to find a kindred spirit who also has time to spend chatting away. In general, striking up real friendship becomes slower and more arduous, because no one wants to get hurt and rejected again, nor do they wish to spend their limited resources on people outside of their family or work. People with some intelligence remember and imagine all the things that go wrong between people, and hesitate to take yet another risk. While I feel tired myself, and for good reasons, I also wish to counteract some of this tendency, as it can lead to complacency and unwillingness to embrace different ways of thinking and living life - you can lose the ability to listen to others. Self-acceptance mirrors the acceptance of others. It's a ping-pong effect, as more acceptance of others probably fosters more self-acceptance, and vice versa. It's complex and in this area, self-sabotage happens very easily. Very often people start competing to reject each other first. It's important however, not to dwell on who's to blame, especially be careful about simplistic new agey concepts such as self-rejection which hardly helps anyone in the facing of their blocks.

There is a spiritual viewpoint, which suggests that anything you react to outside of yourself is really only tickling your own repressed shadow issues. In other words, no one is 'doing' anything to you, but you are experiencing an emotional response because you have a problem. If you feel that people reject you, maybe you have a subconscious tendency to reject others. This tendency might show itself as defensive mannerism and jugmental attitudes. Maybe you're not as open and friendly as you thought you were. You might say, that it's the people in this particular place where you find yourself who are unfriendly and dismissive. Yet, there are all sorts of personal reasons of karma that took you to this place and made you attract the experiences that you find offensive. You can trace the whole line of cause and effect backwards in time - well, in reality it spreads out like a great net of causal events, in all directions. There is no point in trying to understand all that this entails; it's too complicated and most of it is imbedded in the unconscious anyway. It can be overwhelming and depressing. Beat yourself up for the repeated failure to learn your lessons and you have the start up of the darkest of depressions! What you need to do is locate the repressed feeling and liberate it; yes, it's easier said than done, but it's a vital part of our development as humans.

While I subscribe to this spiritual viewpoint, I do find it somewhat polarised and therefore a bit problematic. There are also collective energies and tendencies tied to certain times and places. While all this is no doubt intricately connected to you and your place in the whole so that you can live and learn lessons of unimaginable scope, there are probably also collective issues that have nothing whatsoever to do with you. In general these are things you don't feel attracted to or get entangled in. I'd therefore like to propose a slightly less polarised view, a paradox that encompasses a subjective and objective stance within one and the same framework, suggesting a less sollipsistic and claustrophobic atmosphere of 'me, me and more me'.

War or a natural catastrophy is something that goes on somewhere in the world but it may not concern you directly. However, as all the energetic movements on our planet and in our cosmos are so complicated, we are still likely to get affected by them in some ways. For instance, there may be very important cosmic changes going on but it's not necessarily easy to establish where your place in the grand scheme really is. I feel that this can sometimes make creative, sensitive people more withdrawn, and so it will reflect on my own social life. Or maybe it's as simple as your husband's ex feeling jealousy... how much of that has anything to do with you? You can see what your feeling response is and then walk away. It's up to us how we respond; this can always be made into a lesson of sorts. It's never really wasted, is it?

In the case of friendship I would thus conclude that you may have to look at a lot of unpleasant shadows in other people that don't have anything much to do with you, but you may still react to them. If you're a highly sensitive person (as defined by Elaine Aron), you are most certainly reacting to all sorts of things that are worrysome. Not only do you realize how little people actually care, how preoccupied they are with their own lives, and how limited their understanding of other people's problems really is... you end up sharing much less, as you know that many subjects are beyond authentic sharing. Wishful thinking is no longer part of your mental vocabulary. You have become so very complex (as opposed to just complicated), so people who really understand where you're coming from are rare and far between. Ironically, the oldest friends are often the most loyal even when you don't have a whole lot in common. Familiarity takes on a new meaning, providing a sense of much needed security. You're tired of being exhausted from feeling that you're giving more than you're receiving, thereby limiting your entanglement with anything that doesn't happen with directness and spontaneity. I try and act on spontaneity, even if it makes me feel pushy at times, but my Nordic shyness often gets the best of me. Insert some more bladibla... In any case it's hard to say whether the chicken comes before the egg. Ideally, you would give unconditionally, not expecting anything back. Yes we all know that, but how to put it into practice?

You do need to stop and revise your attitudes, with candid honesty about the issues that are keeping you from embracing others lovingly, while opening yourself to change. Hand on heart; how many of us are that filled up with surplus energy and unconcerned by past conditioning and trauma? For most of us, there is still work to be done not only to become more authentic, but also to open up more to our spiritual intelligence. As you clean out your subconscious mind of issues, you start seeing things more for what they really are. Even friendship itself may need to be redefined, for instance to encompass a more accepting attitude to the coming and going of people in our lives or more differences. I know that for myself, a problem is giving out a lot of energy to form relationships, and then seeing people disappear from my life. I believe the answer is to accept the ephemereal nature of all aspects of life, but also become a better conduit of energy so that you do not replete yourself. Or; you may find that it is better at this time to stand back and conserve energy by not scattering it about. It is your mindful choice.

When I got married, I was deeply disappointed with the lack of attention from people who I expected something from because I considered them my or my husband's friends. The wounds are deep, but at some point I had to just realize that most people have a lot of dark shadow stuff embedded in their subconscious minds, and that breaking the contact because of this was not always such a good idea. A lot of dark stuff is out in the open these days - this is a good thing. Making these decisions was very heavy, and I still feel hurt. I know I'm dealing with something on the inside that is escaping my mindful eye, because it's comfortable being the way it is. The mind can trick itself into seeing only what it wants to see, and even though I always thought of myself as being particularly observant of the workings of my own mind, something is obviously escaping me. It will be interesting to see what emerges, as it is already about to be exposed.

The question is, should we expect to do shadow work with our friends? Well, recently I have been despairing because it seemed to me that I had become so transparent and 'touchy' that the only way to relate to anyone was by opening up and dealing with disappointments and frustrations. It would require quite a motivated friend - again, I think that age brings about a sense that friendship shouldn't be yet another burden, and so it's not so easy to get to this point. I'm not sure friendship should be difficult, maybe it should really be an oasis, but sometimes we are so full of things to work out that it's the only way of getting anywhere. We may also be afraid of losing our friends by putting demands on them, and will thus hold back. Some restraint is probably necessary, as we need people in our lives and need to make informed decisions about how much to tolerate and how much to ask the other person to tolerate in return. Even the most motivated shadow worker probably has misgivings in this respect.

In practice, regarding friendship, you have to ask yourself, if someone doesn't cause you continuous stress then you should probably try and honour the years of friendship that the both of you have invested in it, and try and forget some of the hurt. I don't know how you stop expecting anything from people without closing off your heart, but I think it is definitely possible. The ongoing process is why making friends still seems like a big challenge and a source of pessimism or disenchantment, and I know I'm not alone in this. Like me, more and more people have challenges of a lasting kind that needs acceptance rather than overcoming (i.e. chronic illness), but the environment is not ready to accept deviance of any sort. Something still requires healing so that the heart ceases to be so vulnerable. A strong heart is capable of great compassion. Human beings are overwhelmed by life and few have a solid basis to stand on. Balance in give and take heals the ego self, whereas a lack of concern about giving unconditionally is part of a greater spiritual process. These are possible to attain, albeit amongst the most difficult tasks in life.

Nonetheless, many good things have come out of the internet.

Gender Issues, Cyberlove and Truthfulness

Every intellligent man I've ever talked to has denied that there are any differences between the genders that are truly worth mentioning. The funny thing is, every intelligent woman that I have talked to has denied that there would not be some very significant differences. It seems to me, that women in general have a broader scope of vision that encompasses viewpoints connected to emotions and intuition. It seems to me, that the old adage that women are caretakers and therefore tend to be more compassionate still stands true despite some attempts at greater equality between the sexes. Equality is also a funny thing because in my country, it means that men don't open doors to women or help them out when they are struggling with their baby carriages. Some more intellectual people try and reach the true essence of equality that would allow both parties to have an equal say in matters of the heart as well as matters of day-to-day practicality. I read somewhere, that Swedish women are the happiest women in the world. They have the most freedom to do what they want and also have the man's blessing. They don't seem to mind too much that it's at the expense of the old fashioned courteous ways that make a woman feel like a woman. Subject not closed as yet, it seems. See an early blog on the issue of true equality from a spiritual point of view.

I recently became aware by talking to various people that I need to try and empty myself of a lot of indoctrination that has happened over the past years. I need to hold on more to my quest for real honesty and authenticity and not the make belief kind of truthfulness that abounds. It's not very easy because there are many counterforces that try to allure a person into a dishonest position. If people you engage yourself with are not on the same wavelength, you'll have even more trouble in this regard. This is anyway a very real and important issue for me right now. Men have tried to undermine my strength because they were weak individuals, society has attempted to squash me and force me into a category of second rate citizens (they obviously have no use for me so why bother?) and spiritual people have been very fervent in handing out advice as to how I should live my life. I have been observing and digesting and trying to figure out what all these people are about. I see very little altruism in this world. I honestly don't think altruism is in the eyes of the beholder, though beauty is, and therefore we have a saying that stresses beauty. I see a lot of inner beauty in human beings almost as if I can't help it, but reality proves to be different. I feel very strongly, that it's a case of confusion, frustration and ignorance that covers up the inner light. On the rare occasion when I see kindness, I light up as well. To be complimented for one's kindness is a beautiful thing and something I am always very grateful to hear. But when is it only a compliment meant to allure you to feel more for the other person? In the real world, you may be able to tell quite easily. In the cyber world, this may be far more difficult. People are not who you might think they are, though that granted you can indeed in my opinion use discernment and see some portions of the truth. Virtual contacts is a great way of exercising discernment.

So how does kindness relate to equality and gender issues? Well, it seems to me that it's very difficult to be friends with a man. In the past, it has worked well for me because there has been this unspoken agreement that nothing else is going on or ever will. I have been fairly sure of what I've wanted and I've also been able to read the men sufficiently to know what they want. Usually, they express romantic interest very quickly or then not at all. In my more adult years I have met only one guy who came onto me after we'd known each other for quite some time. But I did suspect him of fancying me all the same.

In recent years, I've had to rely on internet contacts in order to have a social life. I have believed in various compliments regarding my talents or kindness. It hasn't always occurred to me that there might have been an ulterior motif such as getting me to be supportive of them. Women beware! If they claim to be terribly interested in who you are, please practice caution. Unfortunately, most of my experiences with men who were interested in me were pretty bad. A couple of Asians wanted to come and meet me almost without any preliminary contact at all. A German guy who was very much into some spiritual guru was prepared to cheat on his wife and "keep" a woman in Helsinki that he visited quite often. Well, that's what I figured out later since his first explanation was simply that the marriage wasn't going well at all. He wasn't quite sure about me though, so he grilled me for a couple of months and wouldn't agree to meet me. I was curious and since we got on well I somehow felt interested to meet. The waiting was very stressful on me though. We met once, I gave him all sorts of viewpoints I think he needed to hear, and he told me that it would be hard to live with me because I "notice everything". He was nice enough but had I had the experiences I have had now I would have bid him adieu in a week's time within knowing him. My choices are sometimes a bit odd, I do admit that. Whenever I feel a connection with someone, I am prepared to make a lot of efforts in order to get to know them. Now the succession of experiences that followed included an Italian who called whenever it suited him (he was obviously not interested and that caused some negative reactions in me), some really perverted suggestions, and the return of my ex that involved a 24/7 waiting period to hear from him in one way or another. He was in Helsinki while I had already moved away to a town 2 hours away. After that was over I waited for an American guy to show up here in Finland but he chickened out. Soon after another American came onto me online and made all sorts of promises that I only later found out that he wasn't able to keep. I was waiting for his phone calls every day. Eventually I had to go to America myself in order to meet him. Well, it was yet another disaster lasting three months, after which I was still waiting for his calls for a number of months and then for my things that he is not able to deliver. And all this is only for starters; there's more but I will refrain from boring the reader. I do also have a condition that causes very low stress tolerance but along with all this constant waiting on men, their visits, calls and decisions, wore me out completely. I obviously had to stop being so desperate, haha. But anyway, you get the picture? For some odd karmic reason, I've had to WAIT a lot. For men. I guess they do need to retreat into their cave every so often, though that's really a best case scenario.

Now, with all the virtual messaging going on I do feel somewhat desperate to talk to and actually get to meet the people I am talking to as fast as possible. This is obviously difficult if the geographical distance is great. Yet one can always hope, and maybe even plan it. This is especially true in the case of the opposite sex. Now why would this be?

I think it's quasi impossible to engage in an interesting conversation with someone of the opposite sex without considering the element of romance. However, since I'm rather realistically minded in this sense and have never felt love in cyber space, I find it very hard to understand how troubling this is to other people. A recent incident left me completely upside down when my vision of a truly honest and interesting quest for authenticity was interpreted as a desire for romance. Let me say this about myself and many other women; we do want to feel appreciated as women and it can be a great starting point for friendship that can eventually lead to something more. However, if we feel appreciated only for our brains (or I do anyway) then it's kind of a turn off. Most of the time. It's not that I am aiming at a romantic outcome. I just don't want to be treated by a man like a person without a gender. On the other hand, I also don't want to be accused of looking for romance just because I'm expressing interest in a man's intellect and personality. Oh, I know this is confusing and I've been struggling this weekend to make sense of it all. It's all the more difficult because of the elusive concept of equality. What exactly does it mean? Nobody knows but those who are intelligent feel it's important. I think that if it's very clear from the start that the connection is only based on friendship and will not go further, then there is no problem. This is very difficult to establish in the virtual world, however. It is just way too easy to fantasize, or to misunderstand and twist another's efforts to be genuine and open. It's even more confusing when the genuinity and openness, as well as kindness, is being encouraged, but there are no signs that there could ever be a meeting in real life. I mean, if someone is at least a little interested, they would agree that meeting would be a goal to work towards, right? Surely it's only normal that one would express some frustration if this is not possible very fast. So how do you deal with such ambiguities?

Because of a great confusion on this level in regards to an internet contact I had a forceful emotional break down that brought up all the bad experiences I've had in the past few years, as well as my fear of rejection that popped up all of a sudden. My gutfeeling was telling me that I was in yet another situation of waiting. The messages were not clear regarding the expectations on the relationship in question and I felt that I had to play by someone else's rules, though later on when it was already "too late" I learned that I had had some kind of expecatations (I'm aware of only one, which was to be heard and understood just like he did!). I am simplifying the situation so as to stick the issue that my blog is about. I have to say though, that as a result of my strong reaction, suddenly it seemed that neither my kindness nor my feelings were that imporant to the other person anymore. A female friend suggested to me this is to be expected. When men run into trouble, they avoid it. They don't even want to consider the possibility that they may be losing an extraordinary person, a "one timer". They tend to think in terms of the here and now and what makes them uncomfortable is what needs to be eliminated. I'm sorry if this sounds terribly stereotypical and men are welcome to disagree, but this assumption is based on years of experience and talk with other women. In this case my emotional break down was apparently reason enough to cause division. No matter how much I tried to explain the reasons and how they had little to do with the person in question, there was little receptivity as if the knight's shield was up to prevent any arrows from hitting the wrong place. I do wish that men would realize that women usually are much more emotional and not be so scared of it. We really can't help at times that we don't have a choice in controlling our feelings.

Meanwhile, as I'm waiting for some kind of response that may or may not come, I'm really cooling off. Whereas some things obviously turn guys off, some things turn women off. Somewhere deep down the knowledge that someone wasn't all that interested in talking on the phone and meeting up, hurts the woman in me. It seems to me, that I was asking for answers when I shouldn't have, because the other person needed space. Personally I have trouble dealing with feelings that are left hanging in the air and in fact don't tolerate that in a relationship. This is maybe part of my personal shadow but if I'm willing to talk to about it, then one would hope the other person who acted as a trigger would be willing to help work it out or just be supportive. In my case this didn't happen and I never got any other answer than "it was too much". Suddenly my openness becomes a toxic need for attention. I learn in retrospect that I have expected too much - well... I think that's very relative from person to person. I'm not perfect, yet I do need to try and understand... how do you when you don't get a straight answer? Seems to me all this person wanted was help on his own path, since my kindness was welcome to the extent that it supported this person's understanding of himself. And that's from someone who hated narcissism (which could very well be a sign that he in fact has a shadow side that is narcissistic). Sure I may have misinterpreted... I was also reprimanded because I try and analyze this person. I'm trying to understand this guy but am not getting response, so why should I not try and analyze? There's this thing called a woman's intuition, too... Warning signs come up when you hear word's such as control and reticience plus a bunch of excuses why things have to be a certain way and they have to think about proceeding or not rather than wondering what we can do. Honestly? I think this kind of behaviour is selfish and rude, even though they may be coming out of a person's denied shadow side. Remark that though I was very upset I didn't yell or demean this person. Men alway say yeah yeah they do want to grow - but how often have I actually seen it happen unless it was completely on their terms and thus just a repetition of what they've already decided about themselves?

Considering how much effort I've put into so many bad relationships, courtships, contacts and dates, it's no wonder that the lack of that little extra can make the whole thing fall apart. It seems to me that men and women feel differently about the romantic aspect of a relationship or the expectations that could lead to one in the end, but we sure both need encouragment of some kind to keep going. I can't really explain why this is - maybe there are exceptions but I truly wonder?

One thing I've gained during my emotional break down, however, was the insight that I will continue pursuing uncompromising honesty, absolute truthfulness and authenticity no matter what people say or do to discourage me. And I mean that society supports shallowness, but also that some people discourage you indirectly by simply misunderstanding you and not agreeing to explore these issues on a really deep level. I had a vision of what it could be between two people and how much one could grow from an interaction based in honesty (the kind kind, of course) and true equality, but it didn't materialize. Perhaps it was all my fault - who is to say? I will try and contemplate my strategies, of course. Avoid men who right away think that I am in love with them, and stuff like that... (haha). All I can do is hope that I will find new people who understand and don't shy away because the going gets a little rough. What I do hate are people who promise to be there for you when times are difficult, yet take off as soon as it doesn't suit them. Maybe I'm too hard on people who feel uncomfortable about some issue of mine, but frankly, I've never even heard anyone say that before. People like to project outwards what they have already established about themselves, but when something interferes with their self-image, they run. Intelligent men like to talk about equality, but where is it when truly needed? I see men usually wanting the upper hand. What is true compassion really about anyway?

Artwork: "Bus Door", digital photograph by author, all rights reserved, 2009

The Paradox of the Moths Attracted To the Light

I'm not sure I will be able to make sense in this line of thoughts, but I will try... The subject is a complicated one, and my brain may well prove to be too small to express what I feel.

In my opinion, moralist creeds of a Victorian kind are of a lower level on the evolutionary ladder (a friend pointed this out and I whole heartedly agree!). On the contrary, speaking the truth the way it is (though without any kind of manipulative intent) is of a higher order. I also think that if you do speak your mind in a straightforward sense without assertiveness, you might still be looked upon with the evil eye by those who adhere to a more moralist, law abiding way that likes to apply rules and not freedom of speech. I think this happens to some people, and it is not a funny constellation for either party. Of course, no one can help that they are at a certain point in their own evolution, and so each should be met with due respect. Easier said than done, however! I find, that sometimes resorting to strong words is the only way of being heard and gaining respect when in conflict with strangers in daily life. It is deplorable, but is there any other way? Of course, one could try sending love to the enemies, but truth to say not many of us have it in us all the time...

Observe, that I am not advocating immoral behaviour or that we should not respect social laws. I am only saying, that there are areas that are ambiguous (such as religion and texts related to them) that can be interpreted in various ways, and so a very rigorous fundamentalist approach to such creeds is truly dated and obviously not a working concept in the modern world! I venture to suggest that rituals and formulae belong to a lower level of existence and don't matter in the higher dimensions where the consciousness of only very few human beings reside. I leave it up to each and everyone to ponder the meaning of this statement.

Some terminology before I go on: by evolution I mean the development of the individual as well as the collective consciousness. By frequency I mean what colloquially speaking people mean when they talk about being on a certain wavelength. This is connected to the point at which a person is on their own evolutionary ladder. By dimension I mean steps on the evolutionary ladder, almost interchangeable with frequency. These dimensions are represented in our body by energy centres or vortexes of energy, commonly called chakras.

I think we live in a time that is very trying on us and so occasional lack of motivation, apathy and even depression is to be expected. Some of it may be due to a kind of hibernation in which the mind and the body allow for changes to occur in the unconscious parts of the self. Some of it may simply be sensitivity to all the heavy issues that are being dealt with on the collective level. Some agree with me that there is something like a suffocating blanket of darkness arisen from a process of purification of the collective mind. I do see and sense a lot of processing going on among people in the media. I do believe this will amount to a transition of the general level of understanding and insight, but as in all processes of change, both joy and suffering is present.

I've been having problems with the beginnings of an ulcer, and it's very obvious that it has a lot to do with being dependent on other people's decision making and how they distribute money to me that is rightfully mine. A big issue is the feeling that people don't see or hear my needs, but impose their own view of who I am and what my problems are in an assertive way. Another issue is disappointments in regard to friends who seem to care less than what I'd expect from a friend. The standard answer would be to let go of expectations and whishes, and not allow yourself to feel like a victim. Well, I'd say that is easier said than done! However, I've heard that abdominal problems do occur on a large scale among sensitive people right now, and so I feel quite confident that it is also a matter of picking up collective issues. It's also tough to be sensitive and see such a lack of altruism in this world, and this must surely affect our emotional self. In addition, the evolutionary transition or shift is now supposed to arise from the dimension represented by of our third energy center (the solar plexus) to the energy center of the heart (the 4th chakra/energy level). So, is pain in the solar plexus area and maybe lower too as many also struggle with second level issues, really all that surprising?

I want to point out, that in no way do I feel truly powerless. I feel powerful beyond measure, but somewhat powerless within the confines of the reality that my persona has to endure. That is but a part of me, however. I am not speaking of mental division such as schizophrenia, but a deeper sense of not identifying all that much with the smaller self.

I ran into a question today though, and am still not sure how to tackle it. I read, once more, how we should embrace the qualities of people who annoy us and not only love them, but see them as part of ourselves. Of course, we are a collective entity and so individual separation is ultimately an illusion. Now I've been very much into shadow work so the idea of people projecting onto others what they don't want to see in themselves is not foreign to me at all. However recently, I've started to feel completely incapable of looking inside for resonance with people around me who create disturbance. It's as if somewhere inside, I feel I've had enough of that and that it's time to see people for what and who they are and stop taking on part of their issues. Why must I always take the blame for everything that is going on in my life? Maybe some things just are the way they are regardless whether my consciousness is there or not, and so the crap that I happen to recieve is arbitrary in the sense that the target could be anyone, but I happen to react to it where someone else wouldn't say a word or think twice about it. I am trying to say, that things are so many faceted, that saying that there is always a clear one-to-one relationship between you and something bad that's going on is simplistic. I mean, a person might be born to face a war, which is perhaps part of his or her life's purpose. On the other hand, the war might be a side line where something else is a more important reason for this person to be born at that particular time. In the end I'm sure all these issues are intertwined, but perhaps not always quite as we think. What people think usually has very little to do with the truth.

In a way, if you accept what wrong others are doing, surely you are then sliding into their frequencies? These might be lower than where you want to be. I was quite surprised that this particular person whose view point I am referring to and who is an authority in this field, was advocating "the embrace" and at the same time saying that lower and higher frequencies cannot exist in the same place. To me this sounds very contradictory. I understand that we are all one and so in a sense acceptance is a valid and even necessary attitude. But on the other hand, do all of us really have to do shadow work (looking inside to see what in ourselves matches the external reality) for the rest of our lives? She seems to be saying that on the one hand we have to co-exist, but on the other we don't have to. Get my meaning?

Could it be that some of us just have to take a lot of crap because the world is now in a state of chaos and people who represent "higher" values (by this I mean that they have a more spiritual and above all, broader, frame of mind) attract more narrow minded humans who are possibly a bit like moths attracted to the light? After all, forerunners and prophets have always been spat on or adored in an obsessive way. Or is there a third alternative, a paradox, where both viewpoints are true, and how in this case does it manifest? This is, after all, a dual reality, and in order for anything to move forward in an evolutionary (developmental) way, opposites must be joined together. I keep hearing proposals of a new reality that is very much caught in an either-or constellation. So maybe my question is not so much whether those lacking in light are attracted to those who are able to manifest the light or whether some who manifest a lot of light attract negative things because they fail to shine all the light they really are. Maybe it's rather, what is the way in which one can accept a conflicting constellation based in dualism and transcend it? I have been thinking about this for so long, yet all I hear within myself is: "just relax into life the way you know how to!"

Artwork: "Emotions 3/6", handmade collage by author, all rights reserved 2003